Online gaming has become part of many companies marketing plans. Marketing once was based around clever slogans and memorable commercials is moving with the technology craze over online gaming. The digital revolution is prevalent now more than ever before in the marketing world.
According to New York Times article “Axa Equitable Pitches in an Online Game” by Stuart Elliot “...online gaming or casual gaming, is becoming increasingly popular with marketers because it is becoming increasingly popular with consumers”. An unlikely company to take part in the gaming boom is Axa Equitable. This insurance company has posted a game called Pass It On, on their website axa-equitablepassiton.com. Pass It On is designed to encourage consumers to purchase life insurance. The company has even given consumers and incentive to play the game and pass it along to friends. This incentive is a sweepstakes with cash prizes of $25,000 and $15,000.
With life insurance sales an all time low Axa Equitable is using gaming to increase revenue and target the 11 million households with children under 18 who do not have life insurance.
Axa Equitable is by no means the only company using gaming to increase revenue. Hollywood is turning to gaming to build up a must see factor when marketing new movies. The Hunger Games used online gaming to ensure the premier would be a box office hit. A great New York TImes article, “How ‘Hunger Games’ Built Up Must-See Fever” by Brooks Barnes, gives a great description of the steps the Hunger Games marketing team took to make the movie such a success.
Before the release of the Hunger Games, a new poster was released, but cut into 100 puzzle pieces. The digital puzzle was given to 100 web sites and posted on their Twitter in lockstep. The idea of the puzzle was to make fans search twitter to find all the pieces of the puzzle. The puzzle could be assembled by either printing the pieces and putting them together, or using an online program like photoshop. The Hunger Games puzzle was a great success and more is to come with online marketing. Lionsgate, the production company of The Hunger Games later released a Facebook game as well as a virtual tour of the Capitol ( the city in the movie) in a partnership with Microsoft.
This is only the beginning of marketing and gaming joining forces. With the short attention span of todays generation online gaming has proven to be a successful marketing tool.
Companies like Kiip jumped on the concept of linking marketing to gaming. Kiip is an app company based in san-franscisco. They link gaming and marketing through iphone games. When you play a game enabled game on your smartphone, your rewards are real world prizes. If you were to win starbucks coffee Kiip would tell you where the closest starbucks is to redeem your reward. To tell you more about the Kiip, watch ceo Brian Wong.
Brain Wong has a great concept that appeals to both consumers and advertisers alike. Personaly I would be more inclined to play a kiip enabled game if I knew I could win a free snack or cup of coffee. Really... who doesn't want free stuff!?
According to USA Today article, "Buisinesses Use Gaming Principles in Marketing" by Mike Snider, "gamification" is the future. M2 Reasearch, a california based research firm has predicted that "Business spending on what has become known as "gamification" will increase from an estimated $242 million this year to $2.8 billion in 2016". The prediction that spending will increase tremendously is because gamification has been working and will continue to enhance gaming and marketing alike.
Gamification has improved employee incentives, allowed small businesses to connect to consumers through location gaming apps and caught the interest of the consumer. This gamification business model is they next big thing in Marketing.